Linguistic Dating of Biblical Texts

While
ancient Hebrew underwent linguistic change, as do languages in
general, the biblical texts seem not to reflect this chronology in a
way that makes any kind of linguistic dating of the texts possible –
in contrast to the consensus prevailing among Hebrew linguists until
about a decade ago.

Essay based onLinguistic Dating of biblical Texts.
Volume 1: An Introduction to Approaches
and Problems. Volume 2: A
Survey of Scholarship, a New Synthesis and a Comprehensive
Bibliography. BibleWorld. London:
Equinox Publishing, 2008.

By Ian Young
Associate Professor, Department of Hebrew,
Biblical and Jewish Studies, The University of Sydney

By Robert Rezetko
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Religious Studies,
Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen Honorary Research Associate,
Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies,
The University of Sydney

By Martin Ehrensvärd
Part-time Lecturer, Department for the Study of Religion,
University of Aarhus Lecturer, Department of Biblical Exegesis,
The University of Copenhagen

July, 2010

1.
Introduction

In the last few years, a challenge has been
mounted to the consensus view that Biblical Hebrew (BH) can be
divided into two discrete historical periods: Early Biblical Hebrew
(EBH) and Late Biblical Hebrew (LBH), or early Hebrew and late
Hebrew. The starting point for this challenge was the publication of
a volume Young edited with―in the words of one reviewer―the
“yawn-invoking title” of Biblical
Hebrew: Studies in Chronology and Typology
(2003).

EBH,
according to the traditional view, is the language of the preexilic
or monarchic period, down to the fall of the kingdom of Judah to the
Babylonians in 586 BCE. The exile in the sixth century BCE marks a
transitional period, the great watershed in the history of BH. After
the return from exile in the late sixth century BCE, we have the era
of LBH. Thus, EBH developed into LBH. Hebrew biblical texts can,
therefore, be dated on linguistic grounds because LBH was not written
early, nor did EBH continue to be written after the transition to
LBH.

We suggest that following through the logic of
this chronological approach to BH actually leads inevitably to the
conclusion that all
the biblical texts were composed in the postexilic
period, which is exactly the opposite of what its proponents have
claimed. Now, this may in fact be a conclusion which is congenial to
some. But others will not find this agreeable, so we will offer a way
out of this conclusion by arguing that the presuppositions of the
chronological approach are undermined by the evidence. On the
contrary we will argue that the best model for comprehending the
evidence is that “Early” BH and “Late” BH,
so-called, represent co-existing styles of Hebrew throughout the
biblical period. Then we will deal with the objection that Persian
loanwords are an irrefutable proof that the chronological approach is
correct. Finally we will step back and ask some hard questions about
the presuppositions involved in the dating―by linguistic or
other means―of the books of the Hebrew Bible.

It is the work of the great Israeli scholar Avi
Hurvitz that has established sounder methodological principles and
therefore decisively advanced the study of LBH in recent decades. One
of his many important advances is to put to rest older scholars’
insistence that “Aramaisms”―or Aramaic-like
forms―are necessarily evidence of a late date. Contrast, for
example, Otto Eissfeldt’s argument regarding Song of
Songs―Aramaisms and a Persian word equals lateness―with
John Collins, who only mentions the Persian word. It is, therefore,
not inappropriate if we concentrate on Hurvitz’s methodology
and presuppositions here. We illustrate these first of all by several
quotes from his early work on the Prose Tale of Job.

Hurvitz argues in his article on the Prose Tale of
Job, as he does elsewhere, that the late elements in the text “betray
their actual background; and if they are not few or sporadic ―
in which case their occurrence may be regarded as purely incidental ―
they effectively date a given text.” Later, he mentions “the
existence of a considerable number of such [late] elements in the
Prose Tale...” and concludes: “As far as can be judged
from the linguistic data at our disposal, these non-classical
idioms ought to be explained as post-classical
― namely, as imprints of late Hebrew ― thus making the
final shaping of the extant Prose Tale incompatible with a date prior
to the Exile.” Thus: “It would appear that in spite of
his efforts to write pure classical Hebrew and to mark his story with
“Patriarchal coloring,” the author of the Prose Tale
could not avoid certain phrases which are unmistakably characteristic
of post-exilic Hebrew, thus betraying his actual late date.”

Thus,
according to Hurvitz, despite his best efforts, it was not possible
for the author of the Prose Tale of Job to avoid using LBH linguistic
features. Here, however, we note a striking fact about the argument.
Even demonstrating, using Hurvitz’s careful methodology of
distribution-opposition-external attestation (as discussed below),
that a particular linguistic feature is LBH does not lead to the
classification of the text in which it is found as LBH. As Hurvitz
admits, LBH linguistic elements are found in EBH texts. Thus, as
Hurvitz emphasizes in the quote above, it requires a “considerable
number” of such LBH elements in a text before that text can be
considered LBH. This is the criterion of accumulation.

In his article on the Prose Tale of Job, Hurvitz
identifies seven linguistic features in the 749 words of the Prose
Tale as LBH elements and considers this enough evidence to date the
work late. Now at this point the uninitiated might be a bit puzzled
by the argument. Why, it might be asked, did Hurvitz need to decide
that seven
linguistic features were enough to date the Prose Tale late? Why, in
the first quote, did he need to emphasize that the LBH forms need to
be more than few or sporadic? Surely, if these are really “late”
linguistic items, the appearance of any one of them should indicate a
late date for the passage in which it appears. But this is not the
way it works in attempts to date BH writings linguistically.

One of Hurvitz’s most important
contributions to scholarship is his insistence on a careful
methodology. For an individual linguistic item to be considered
characteristic of LBH, it must have a distribution
among the core LBH books of Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and
Chronicles. Thus, for example, 78 out of 91 occurrences of malkut
for “kingdom” are in core LBH books. Hurvitz’s
basic starting point, which we think is uncontroversial, is that
these books are postexilic and therefore their language represents
samples of postexilic Hebrew. The other key element in Hurvitz’s
methodology is that not only must the linguistic element be evidenced
in the LBH books, it must exhibit a linguistic opposition;
in other words, it must be used in similar contexts as other forms in
the core EBH books, especially the Pentateuch and Former Prophets.
This crucial step ensures that we really do have variant language,
not just linguistic forms that had no opportunity to appear in EBH
books. Thus malkut
contrasts with other BH words for “kingdom” like
mamlakah.
Hurvitz has a third criterion, external
attestation, which tries to demonstrate
that the form really is late by finding whether it occurs in late,
mostly post-biblical Hebrew and Aramaic. Thus malkut
is used widely in later Aramaic dialects and in Tannaitic literature
like the Mishnah. This last criterion, however, promises more than it
delivers. Given that the overwhelming majority of extra-biblical
Hebrew and Aramaic dates to the postexilic period or later it is
virtually inevitable that BH linguistic forms―whether early or
late―will be attested in “late” extra-biblical
sources. Malkut
is also attested in early Aramaic, so it is hard to see how the
external evidence proves anything regarding date. We believe, in any
case, that the excellent criteria of distribution and opposition are
enough to demonstrate that a form is characteristic of the core LBH
books.

This is far from being the full story, however.
Only a small minority of well-attested LBH linguistic forms are not
also found in EBH texts. Thus we have seen that malkut
is clearly a characteristic of LBH, occurring 91 times in the Hebrew
Bible, 78 of them in the core LBH books, and a further six times in
LBH-related psalms and Qoheleth. Yet, still, the remaining seven of
those 91 occurrences in the Hebrew Bible are found in core EBH books
like Samuel and Kings.

To us this phenomenon raises questions about the
chronological approach which are not adequately explored by its
proponents. Is malkut
actually a “late” linguistic item after all? If so, its
appearance in a text should indicate that therefore the text is to be
dated late. And if EBH texts which use malkut
were dated late, this means late texts need not exhibit an
accumulation of LBH features. If against this it is argued that the
LBH linguistic feature found in the EBH text is not actually “late”
but was also available in an early period, then its value for dating
texts “late” is negated. Despite the claims of the
criterion of accumulation, to which we will turn shortly, there is no
reason to assume that an early author could not produce a text with a
clustering of LBH elements if they were available to him. Perhaps,
though, it is not the mere availability of LBH features, but their
frequency which counts. In the study of the natural development of a
spoken language over time, factors such as the date of origin of a
specific linguistic feature and the growth in the frequency of its
use in the language are indeed important considerations. However, the
consensus among scholars of the Hebrew language is that spoken and
written varieties of Hebrew were some distance apart in the biblical
period. In such a situation, the appearance of forms from the spoken
dialects in literary Hebrew is unpredictable and a function of the
individual stylistic choices of authors and scribes. The natural
development of the spoken language behind the biblical texts is
masked by this unpredictability. Issues such as the frequency with
which such features occur, or that other texts avoid them completely,
are dependent on the stylistic choices of individual authors and
scribes, not a reflection of the chronological development of a
natural language, as we shall see further below in detail. Or
perhaps, finally, the LBH elements in EBH texts are evidence of later
textual alteration of the language of the BH books. Proponents of the
chronological model have been loathe to invoke this explanation. Once
it is admitted that the language of the biblical texts has been
changed in scribal transmission, the claim that the language of the
current texts is evidence of the date of the original authors is
thrown into serious doubt. We will return to this point later in
section 5.

These questions aside, it is the phenomenon of the
appearance of LBH linguistic items in EBH texts that leads to
Hurvitz’s final and most important criterion when it comes to
dating texts: accumulation.
This states that a text can only be considered LBH if it exhibits an
“accumulation” of LBH features, identified using the
above criteria of distribution and opposition. Unfortunately, nowhere
to our knowledge has anyone actually specified how much of an
accumulation is necessary for a text to be LBH. Hurvitz’s claim
that the Prose Tale of Job (749 words in length) is in LBH on the
basis of seven LBH features, however, gives us an indication of how
he might apply this criterion.

Another
difficulty with the criterion of accumulation is that we are not
aware of any procedure which has been developed for how such an
accumulation should be measured. In response to this problem we
developed a simple test of accumulation. Plainly put, this counts how
many different LBH features occur in a given stretch of text. Where
possible, this stretch of text will be of 500 words length, or to be
more precise 500 Hebrew graphic units, so that samples will be
comparable. Within this sample we count how many different LBH
features there are. We do not count repetitions of the same feature
since once an author has demonstrated the possibility of using a
particular LBH form, there is no reason why it cannot be repeated as
often as the opportunity presents itself.

The table is very clear. The first surprise is
that every
sample we have studied includes LBH features. The only difference is
the degree of accumulation of them. The core EBH and core LBH books
are at different ends of the scale in terms of the amount of
accumulation of these LBH features. Thus, while the highest core EBH
sample, 1 Kings 22, has eight different LBH features, the lowest LBH
sample, Esther 5–6 has 17, more than twice as many as 1 Kings
22, while all the other core LBH samples have yet higher numbers of
LBH features.

One fact that is evident from the table is that
Hurvitz and other proponents of the chronological approach have
underestimated the amount of LBH features in EBH texts. His argument
for linguistically dating texts like the Prose Tale of Job to a late
period leads, in fact, to the conclusion that all
the biblical texts are postexilic.

Recall
that, firstly, Hurvitz argues that we know the features of postexilic
Hebrew primarily by the distinct features of the core LBH books.
Then, secondly, he argues that even when late writers tried to write
early Hebrew, they betrayed their late origin by the use of a number
of LBH features. This description of the late authors turns out to be
a perfect description of “Early” BH: the authors
attempted to write in a more conservative style than the LBH authors,
yet they repeatedly use LBH features, so as to exhibit accumulations
of them. Therefore, if these LBH linguistic features are actually
late, Hurvitz’s argument logically indicates that EBH is late,
postexilic Hebrew by writers attempting (but failing) to write a more
archaic or conservative style of Hebrew. The LBH authors in contrast
were simply not so concerned to avoid these same linguistic features.
The point is that both EBH and LBH authors used the same linguistic
forms, just to different degrees. Thus EBH and LBH would turn out to
be two styles of postexilic Hebrew, conservative and
non-conservative.

3.
Unravelling the Presuppositions of the Chronological Hypothesis

So, as we
mentioned before, some of us may be quite content to leave all the
biblical books in the postexilic period. However, for others of us we
will now argue that the logic of the argument that leads to this
conclusion is false because many of the presuppositions of the
chronological approach are mistaken.

Hurvitz’s
initial and basic presupposition is that the core LBH books of
Esther, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles faithfully reflect
postexilic Hebrew. This is a faultless presupposition given the
evident dates of all these texts based on their internal references
to at least the beginning of the Persian period. The inferences that
Hurvitz drew from this initial starting point are, however, all open
to question in the light of recent research. These include, firstly,
that LBH was the only sort of Hebrew in the postexilic period and
that therefore a late author was incapable of writing Hebrew without
betraying his lateness, and secondly, that LBH could not be preexilic
also. A third presupposition that underlies all linguistic dating
work is that the traditional Hebrew MT forms of the books faithfully
reflect the language of the original authors. Below (section 5) we
will return to this last point.

The
primary characteristic of EBH books that marks them apart from the
core LBH books is a relatively low accumulation of LBH linguistic
features. From the table above it is evident that such a low
accumulation is a characteristic also of works doubtlessly composed
in the postexilic period. Zechariah 1–8 is, according to the
biblical book, a prophet of the early postexilic period. Even more
surprising, in light of the expectations created by the chronological
approach, is the low number of LBH links in our sample from the book
of Ben Sira from the second century BCE and in the Qumran Pesher
Habakkuk from the first century BCE. Thus far, in fact, we have not
found a non-biblical work at Qumran with a LBH-like accumulation of
LBH features. In light of this evidence, we arrive again at the
conclusion that LBH was but one style of Hebrew in the postexilic
period, alongside EBH.

It is even questionable whether LBH was a style of
Hebrew restricted to the postexilic period. Most importantly, dating
the language of the MT forms of the EBH books to the preexilic
period, as Hurvitz does, indicates that a large number of LBH
features were already in existence and available to be used in the
preexilic period. Only a very small number of well-attested LBH
features are not also found in EBH books. This is a crucial point.
Recall the example of malkut.
That this is not simply due to postexilic modification of the
language of preexilic books―a possibility rejected in practice
by Hurvitz―is evidenced by a number of LBH features in
preexilic, monarchic era inscriptions. The 500 words of the Arad
inscriptions exhibit an accumulation of nine LBH features―more
than the accumulation that led Hurvitz to consign the Prose Tale of
Job to the postexilic period! In fact, as you can see from the table,
the preexilic Arad inscriptions from c. 600 BCE have a higher
accumulation of LBH features than Ben Sira and Pesher Habakkuk,
sources from the last two centuries BCE. Chronology is clearly not
the explanation for these accumulations of LBH features, but rather
that some authors have a stylistic preference for them. There is a
strong case that many, if not most, LBH linguistic features already
existed in preexilic Hebrew. If so, there is no reason why a
preexilic author ―like Qoheleth as Young has argued―could
not produce a work with an accumulation of LBH features. Thus it is a
reasonable suggestion that even in the preexilic period LBH could
have been a co-existing style of Hebrew alongside EBH.

Rather than a model suggesting that EBH and LBH
are successive chronological phases of the language, which is
incompatible with the evidence, a better model sees LBH as merely one
style of Hebrew in the Second Temple period and quite possibly First
Temple period. Both EBH and LBH are styles with roots in preexilic
Hebrew, which continue throughout the postexilic period. “Early”
BH and “Late” BH are not different chronological periods,
but co-existing styles of literary Hebrew throughout the biblical
period. These two general language types, EBH and LBH, are best taken
as representing two tendencies among scribes of the biblical period:
conservative and non-conservative. The authors and scribes who
composed and transmitted works in EBH exhibit a tendency to
conservatism in their linguistic choices in that they only rarely
used forms outside a narrow core of what they considered literary
forms. At the other extreme, the LBH authors and scribes exhibited a
much less conservative attitude, freely adopting a variety of
linguistic forms in addition to (not generally instead of) those
favored by the EBH scribes. Between extreme conservatism (e.g.,
Zechariah 1–8) and extreme openness to variety (e.g., Ezra),
there was a continuum into which other writings may be placed (e.g.
Ezekiel).

Within this new model, much of Hurvitz’s
methodology is still sound. The criteria of distribution, opposition,
and accumulation are still valid ways of describing linguistic
relationships. It is still a worthwhile task to map the linguistic
relationships of the biblical books to each other. Thus it is a
significant result that MT Ezekiel has a higher number of links to
core LBH books than any other prophetic book. The difference is that
our new model simply does not relate such findings immediately to
chronology. The relaxing of focus on chronology also allows us to
notice other patterns of linguistic relationship that have no
relevance to the old chronological model. Thus, scholars have long
noted that Deuteronomy has a strong preference for lebab
as “heart,” while Jeremiah strongly prefers leb.
Jeremiah’s preference is shared by, among others, Genesis,
Exodus, Numbers, Judges and Samuel, and hence is not obviously a sign
of “lateness.” Among the LBH books, Chronicles and Daniel
align with Deuteronomy in preferring lebab,
whereas the other LBH and LBH-related books prefer lebab.
Because this data cannot be used in support of the chronological
theory, it has been generally ignored by language scholars. If enough
of such linguistic links are established, we may be able to note
other groupings of books beyond just EBH versus LBH. We think that
this sort of approach represents the way forward in the study of the
linguistic diversity of the Hebrew Bible.

4.
Persian Loanwords

Surely
the Achilles heel of any non-chronological approach to BH is the
distribution of Persian loanwords. We recall Collins’ opinion
above on the Song of Songs. Even though the argument from Aramaisms
has rightly gone out of fashion since Eissfeldt’s day, the one
related to Persian loanwords is still going strong and has had to
bear increasing weight in the current discussion.

On the one hand, it is generally considered, as
Mats Eskhult has recently put it, that “Persian
loanwords...almost unequivocally point to the Persian era” (c.
500–300 BCE). The other side of this argument is also well put
by Eskhult: “What deserves to be stressed is that Persian words
are not to
be found in the Pentateuch at all! If loanwords of Persian origin are
considered a strong argument when dating biblical texts, then the
lack of
every vestige of such loanwords ought to be considered as an
important evidence for a date of origin prior
to the Persian era.”

We
believe this approach is wrong for the following reasons. First,
Persian loanwords are absent from a number of biblical works that are
universally acknowledged as postexilic, such as the books of Haggai,
Zechariah, and Malachi set in the early Persian period, but also
various other books generally considered postexilic, such as Joel,
Jonah, Job, and Ruth. Also in the Persian era, we may point to the
existence in Aramaic of two co-existing styles, the conservative
Western style, regularly able to avoid Persianisms, and the
non-conservative Eastern style, replete with Persianisms. In any
case, the Hebrew evidence on its own is enough to indicate that
absence of Persian words does not prove that a text is preexilic. In
addition, we may note the powerful analogy with the fact that the
Qumran authors, even though writing well into the Hellenistic period,
were able to avoid using Greek loanwords. Persian and Greek are
non-Semitic languages, and hence presumably loanwords from those
languages were easy to identify and reject should the author so
choose. Therefore, the absence of Persian loanwords in some biblical
texts should not be given much weight in arguing for the pre-Persian
date of those texts.

It is
seldom understood that Persian is one of several related Iranian
languages along with, for example, Median. The Medes were an
important world power in the preexilic period, showing that Iranian
languages were prominent before the Persian period. In fact, various
biblical texts contradict the idea that Persians were not in contact
with the West in the pre-Persian era. Thus, Ezekiel 27.10, a text
internally dated to the end of the preexilic era, refers to Persians
serving in the army of Tyre. Ezra 4.9–10 claims that the
Assyrian king Ashurbanipal settled Persians in Samaria in the seventh
century BCE. Assyrian deportations, in fact, led to significant
population movements throughout the Ancient Near East, centuries
before the exile of Judah. Media is the second most commonly cited
place of origin for deportees, and the Assyrians were famous for
moving populations from east to west and west to east. See, for
example, the exile of Israelites from Samaria to “the cities of
the Medes” in 2 Kings 17.6. Although we seldom possess the
full details of the origin and destination of specific deportations,
a strong case can be made that Iranians were settled in multiple
deportations in the late eighth century BCE to Ashdod, Gath, and
further south toward the Egyptian border. In line with this, scholars
have identified Iranian names on seventh-century BCE texts from the
region. Thus, far from being cut off from Persian and related
languages until the era of the Persian empire, people of Persian or
other Iranian extraction were probably near neighbors of the kingdom
of Judah for a significant part of the preexilic period.

Finally,
there seems little understanding of the way Iranian loanwords are
identified in biblical texts. It is inevitable in research on
loanwords that one must start with presuppositions about which
languages are likely to have influenced BH. Thus, it is unlikely that
one should turn to Australian aboriginal languages to elucidate
difficult words in the Hebrew Bible. In line with the general
consensus of biblical scholars, Iranian scholars have typically
looked for Persian linguistic elements only in those texts they
believed stemmed from the Persian period.

Thus, for example, the Persian word dat
(“law”) occurs in the MT of Deuteronomy 33.2, but this
understanding of the word is generally rejected because it is
considered impossible for a Persian loanword to appear in a text as
early as Deuteronomy 33. Note, as
another example, the discussion by Ran Zadok, a leading expert on
biblical names, of the name Arioch
in Daniel 2.24–25. He concludes that an Iranian “etymology
is accepted here provided that the name in Daniel is not the same as
the much earlier ’rywk in
Gen. xiv 1, 9.” In other words, there is no difference in form
between the Iranian word in Daniel and the non-Iranian one in
Genesis. It is just that it is impossible for Iranian linguistic
elements to appear in “early” biblical texts.

There are
no grounds for criticizing the Iranian scholars for their
methodology. As we have mentioned, the identification of loanwords is
so hypothetical that it is essential that some presuppositions are
used as a starting point. The problem comes when scholars working
with BH fail to understand the methodology of the Iranian scholars
and claim high significance for the fact that there are no
indisputable Persian words or names in EBH sources. This, as should
now be clear, is nothing more than a circular argument: scholars have
not identified Iranian elements in EBH because they have presupposed
that EBH is too early to have them; other scholars then claim that
since EBH texts do not have Iranian linguistic elements; this
demonstrates their early date.

In fact, a preliminary search through the
literature has enabled us to compile a list of 12 Iranian words and
names in EBH sources. Whether they are really Iranian or not, it is
hard to say, given the hypothetical nature of loanwords research, but
we have compiled the list to counter the idea that it cannot be done.
And we argue that it is very likely that the MT intends us to read
the Persian words dat
in Deuteronomy 33.2, raz (“secret”)
in Isaiah 24.16, and peladot
(“steel”) in Nahum 2.4. So if we take the evidence as it
now stands―the usual procedure of Hebrew linguists―then
the answer to whether there are Persian elements in EBH texts is
unequivocally “yes.”

5.
Textual Criticism

The issue of loanwords is a convenient
stepping-off point for the next issue. They are, in fact, a clear
example of what we think is one of the greatest weaknesses of efforts
to date BH texts on a linguistic basis. Here we see a prime and
essential presupposition of the chronological approach in action.

Two or
three Persian words have been enough for some scholars to conclude
that the whole books of Song of Songs or Qoheleth cannot date earlier
than the Persian period. Let us put this into perspective. The
Persian words represent two or three words in texts having 1250 and
2987 words respectively. Given that the Qumran copies of Song of
Songs differ from the MT once every six words, or the Qumran Qoheleth
once every eight, how confident can we be that the couple of Persian
words derive, without change, from the “author” of these
works?

Modern readers are accustomed to a book, once
published, remaining in the same form. Ancient books, however,
according to scholarly consensus, did not maintain a static form, but
developed over time. Despite the extremely fragmentary nature of our
textual evidence, with no texts dating earlier than about 250 BCE and
most of our evidence much later, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the versions
of the Septuagint and the Samaritan text of the Pentateuch among
others, when placed alongside the traditional MT, provide us with
abundant evidence of textual variety. Thus, only a very small
percentage of Qumran biblical texts have a very close relationship
with the MT. For the parallel text 2 Samuel 22//Psalm 18, David
Clines shows that, on average, one in every two words has an attested
variant. Leading text critics such as Emanuel Tov and Eugene Ulrich
agree that the biblical texts evolved through the production of
successive literary editions, as evidenced by the fact that most
biblical books have an attested variant edition.

Thus the
evidence in our possession indicates a high degree of fluidity of
biblical texts in the BCE period. This fluidity is especially
noticeable in regard to the language of the biblical texts. At the
very least, individual linguistic elements came and went during
scribal transmission. The text-critical evidence, therefore, puts a
question mark over the whole enterprise of linguistic dating before
it has begun, since linguistic dating could only work if the language
of the current texts is very close, if not identical to the language
of the “original author” of the text being dated. On the
contrary, the text-critical evidence indicates that the current
linguistic profiles of the biblical books are not only the result of
choices made by their authors only but also by later scribes.

According to general scholarly consensus on
historical-critical issues and according to the consensus of
text-critical scholars, the books of the Hebrew Bible are in their
present, final form postexilic, but with elements (generally
considered to be substantial) that go back to the preexilic period.
Thus we would not expect any BH work to represent purely preexilic
Hebrew. The fact that the orthography of all known biblical
manuscripts is typologically different and, apparently, later than
that of the Hebrew inscriptions would seem to back up this
expectation. Textual criticism shows us that after orthography,
language was the second most commonly changed element of the texts.
The EBH and LBH linguistic forms of biblical books are thus not only
the result of choices made by their authors. Later scribes clearly
could change the EBH/LBH orientation of a text during its
transmission. The classic example is the book of Isaiah in its EBH MT
form and its more LBH form in the Qumran 1QIsaa,
but many cases exist of linguistically variant forms of the same
book, passage, or individual linguistic item. 4QCantb
or the Samaritan Pentateuch represent systematic linguistic
differences to the MT forms of the books. Often the variant forms
represent EBH linguistic forms in contrast to LBH features of the MT.
One example is the presence in the MT Pentateuch of examples of the
LBH min
(“from”) separate before a noun without the definite
article, all of which are absent from the Samaritan Pentateuch. Note
the contrasting tendency of the scribe who added LBH medinah(“province”) to EBH
1 Kings 20.14–19 with the one who added EBH anoki
(“I”) to Ezekiel 36.28 against the LBH tendency of
Ezekiel to otherwise exclusively use ani.
We must thus see the conservative and non-conservative tendencies
applying in different ways and degrees to each individual textual
version of each biblical book.

We can
now see that the question that needs to be asked is: what are we
actually dating? If biblical books were written and rewritten over
the generations in the BCE period, then the question of the “original
date” when a biblical book was composed is revealed to be
anachronistic and irrelevant. The book as a whole was composed over a
long period of time. Beyond this there are various things we may try
to date such as when do we think the core form of the book came into
being or what is the date of the current form of the text we are
studying? We can see that these are two separate questions and that
we must be very cautious about using the features of the current
texts to date a presumed original composition.

6.
Conclusion

To
conclude, what we refer to as EBH and LBH are two co-existing styles
or tendencies utilized by authors and scribes throughout the biblical
period. EBH refers to a tendency to conservatism in linguistic
choices, only rarely using forms outside a narrow core of what they
considered literary forms. LBH refers to a less conservative
attitude, freely adopting a variety of linguistic forms in addition
to those favored by EBH authors. Later, scribes could choose to
modify the style of a book or passage toward the other style.

The
linguistic variety of our biblical texts, therefore, represents the
end result of the application of these two writing and editing styles
to various editions of the biblical books.

This is not to deny linguistic change in ancient
Hebrew. On the contrary, ancient Hebrew obviously did change over
time. But the nature of the texts
is such that they do not reflect this change in any straight forward
way.

Several
practical outcomes of the new model for biblical studies in general
are clear. First, the many attempts to date biblical books and
passages on the basis of linguistic evidence are all based on a
misconception of the nature of BH, and hence do not have the
evidential value sometimes claimed for them. Second, the new model is
more easily compatible with mainstream scholarship in other fields of
biblical studies, especially textual criticism.

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Comments (5)

Thanks for this detailed article.

What do you make of passages that appear to have been rewritten in LBH, like II Chronicles 6:1-4, mirroring I Kings 8:12-15? As I explain in In The Beginning (though the information is fairly well known), the Chronicles passage appears to be a rewrite of the Kings passage, except that some of the grammar and spelling seems to have changed in accordance with LBH.

-Joel

#1 - Joel H. - 07/16/2010 - 09:09

Thank you for the question, Joel.

The issue is not straightforward. Aside from defining precisely what an LBH feature is (many so-called LBH features are no more characteristic of LBH than EBH books!), I think it is important to consider text-critical explanations, alongside linguistic ones, for the presence, or absence, of LBH features.

For example, sometimes in synoptic passages Chronicles and Samuel-Kings have the same LBH features, sometimes Chronicles has more LBH features than Samuel-Kings, but sometimes it is reversed, and sometimes they have a similar number of LBH features but not the same ones. So, for example, in 1 Kings 22.1–35//2 Chronicles 18.1–34, Kings and Chronicles share 5 distinct LBH features, Chronicles has another 4, and Kings has another 5 (thus, in total, Kings, 10, Chronicles, 9). If we repeat this exercise for a variety of synoptic passages we see that the results go different ways, thus throwing doubt on the standard chronological view that EBH = early and LBH = late.

We discuss the distribution of linguistic features in synoptic Samuel-Kings//Chronicles in detail in our books (see above), especially in vol. 1, chs. 3, 5, 13, and I have looked in detail at this issue in other publications, including a monograph on the ark narrative in 2 Samuel//1 Chronicles.

#2 - Robert Rezetko - 07/16/2010 - 17:55

On what basis is Qoheleth being considered a preexilic author?

#3 - Joseph - 07/21/2010 - 07:59

Young's argument that Ecclesiastes/Qoheleth is pre-exilic has nothing to do with the language. All that is argued in regard to the language is that, yes, it is strange, but not necessarily late. In any period, the language of Qoheleth would need to be explained. Young does this by arguing that the non-traditional message of the book was being presented in a non-traditional form of language.

The specific argument for the pre-exilic date of Qoheleth (see Ian Young, Diversity in Pre-Exilic Hebrew, Tubingen: Mohr, 1993, pp. 140-157) is that Qoheleth presupposes the presence of a king in Jerusalem (see e.g. the beginning of chapter 8). The earliest manuscript of Qoheleth from the Dead Sea Scrolls is dated to the early-mid second century BCE. There was no king in Jerusalem before this date except in the pre-exilic period.

#4 - Robert Rezetko - 07/22/2010 - 12:30

Is "Shibboleth" (Judges 12:6) EBH or LBH?
I always thought a lot of differences were
a regional dialect as opposed to early or late Hebrew. Sort of NY vs. Mississippi or
British vs. American. Job and Ecclesiastes
may be from east or west / north or south
and not Before exile or After exile!
The rewriting can also have been by regional closer contemporaries.
-maggid

#5 - Jerry Rosenberg - 11/25/2010 - 18:29

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